Dallas-based artist, Elaine Pawlowicz, is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in August.
Read on to learn more about her work and influences and click through the slide show above for more images.
What are some of your influences on your work and artistic practices?
I am consciously developing my aesthetics within the traditions of the Chicago Imagists, Modernism, landscape painting, graphic arts, American folk art, Art Brut and Surrealism. It is important for me to travel and participate in artist residencies in remote places to obtain global perspectives and paint directly from nature to continually improve my ideas about color, form and composition. Plein air painting gives me both a directness and spirituality in my painting practice. These intense experiences allow me to maximize my ideas stemming from imagination and intuition.
What drives me as an artist? What are you passionate about that you are able to express in your art?
Frustration drives my art. I want to become a better painter every day and communicate my ideas conceptually and technically for many audiences. I am so excited when I am able to “see” what I have not previously “seen” in my work and restructure or refine my images and compositional strategies. I rigorously experiment with color and the notion of subtlety. I am excited when something mundane instantly jumps out at me. I am challenged to pictorially communicate the eccentric essence about that moment or object. I think in terms of essential shapes and search for striking color combinations which create a magical sensation. In some ways I work very much like a visionary artist. I consciously inject a strange sense of humor into my work.
Tell me about your current projects and upcoming exhibitions.
I will have another solo exhibition at Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas on October 1, 2017. I am volunteering as an honorary studio assistant for my third summer at Project Onward in Chicago, a center for mentally and intellectually disabled adult artists full time during the month of July. Last summer we were commissioned to create 5 projects for the new Obama offices and library. I have been using my experience and creating collaborative, innovative projects between the art department and the Kristin Farmer Autism Center at the University of North Texas in Denton. In the Fall of 2016 I attended a one month artist residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.
Where do I find inspiration?
I find much inspiration in the discarded like in thrift shops. I believe there is an anime in preowned items and some objects strongly emanate to me. I love both vintage toys and the graphics in children’s books. I listen to NPR and read a diverse range of literature from fiction to non-fiction. I love reading myths and stories. I find inspiration driving around the suburbs of Dallas and analyzing DIY landscape designs describing the people who live there. I enjoy listening to my children talking about their day at school. Teaching is challenging and my students give me the opportunity to self-examine what choices I make in my own practice. Teaching allows me to keep very involved in the art world and attend artist lectures, exhibitions and read about all about the wide gamma of the art world from fine art to craft. Walking my dogs at night allow me to think about my day and evaluate what I am doing. Finally, working with the artists at Project Onward is perhaps one of the most inspiring experiences where I witness the artistic process and product created divinely which much earnestness and honesty.
Which artists do you most admire and why?
I admire a wide array of artists: Florine Stetheimer, Gertrude Abercrombie, Phyliss Bramson, Hollis Sigler, Leonore Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Ellen Gallagher, Shahzia Sikander, Dana Schutz, Lari Pitman, Louise Bourgeois, Yoyoi Kusama, Kerry James Marshall, Chris Ofili Thomas Hart Benton, Milton Avery, Adolf Wolfli, Haruki Murakami, Francesco Clemente, Horace Pippen, Forest Bess, Pablo Picasso, Fra Angelico, Peter Doig along with many others. I admire these artists for their tremendous ability to create powerful images with many layers of meanings. They are not afraid to take risks and allow themselves to be conduits to combine personal vision and global perspective.
Elaine Pawlowicz received her BFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and her MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. She continued to live and work as an artist in Chicago for 15 years until moving back to Dallas with her husband and two children now ages 11 and 13. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. In 2005 she completed an installation of 12 large scale paintings commissioned by the City of Chicago for Oriole Park Library. She has been awarded several artist residencies in Wyoming, Montana, Newfoundland, Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal, Kentucky and Ireland. Pawlowicz has taught college level art for almost two decades including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Dayton, and currently serves as an Associate Professor of Art at University of North Texas.
You can see more of Pawlowicz's work on her website, www.faultywire.com.